Reactions to US liberal backsliding

The United States, long regarded as a stable liberal democracy, is undergoing rapid democratic backsliding that increasingly targets liberal civil and social rights. How do citizens in other liberal democracies respond to such developments? We address this question using two causal strategies. First, drawing on a quasi-experiment with individual-level data from thirty-five countries (N=32,080), we show that attacks on women’s rights significantly undermine the United States’ democratic standing among European publics. Second, a pre-registered vignette experiment in Britain (N=2,993) demonstrates that news about attacks on liberal civil and social rights -- specifically the right to protest and LGBTQ+ rights -- reduces perceptions of the United States as a democracy and lowers public willingness to cooperate with the US. These effects are driven by updated beliefs about the United States’ adherence to shared liberal values rather than fears of democratic backsliding at home. Our findings demonstrate that liberal backsliding in the United States carries substantial cross-national costs, weakening its democratic reputation and eroding public support for international cooperation among citizens in allied democratic nations.